Monday, September 3, 2012

Mocavo? - Madness Monday

You know that Mocavo is an online search engine devoted specifically to family history and genealogy websites, right? It says of itself, "Mocavo is the leading free Internet search engine for genealogy. The data in our indexes only includes information of interest to family historians. You will not find Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, or YouTube videos in your Mocavo results."

Well, actually, I'd almost be thrilled to find someone else's dear Aunt Sally. The fact is, when I search Mocavo (the free, basic edition), I find my own ancestors -- the ones I already found and published posts about on this very blog.

See? These are the results for my search on my uncommon surname "Meinzen."

The very strangest thing I find is that most of the posts are listed in the results at least twice and some up to five times! Not only that, many of the posts aren't even about my Meinzens. Yes, several of the posts above are about my Meinzens, but most are about Gerners, Doyles, Bartleys, and/or other family members. (And I didn't show you all the results.)

Mocavo gives so many results for my unusual surname because it finds "Meinzen" on the sidebar of my blog (under my surname list) for every single post and when it searches the posts associated with my labels. It's crazy! (As my daughter might say.)

I wonder if there's a way to tell Mocavo to search only the posts themselves and to ignore surnames listed on the sidebar and elsewhere on a blog. Anyone know? (Subscribing to their plus version is not an option.)

Nancy, Leah's suggestions are great. You should also see an option for each entry that says "I've seen this" (or something similar), so those results that aren't your Meinzens can be eliminated from your results the next time around.

Thanks for the suggestion, Jenny. It may be that that option is available only with the paid version. With the free version there's a tab after each result that says, "Rate This Result." It drops down to offer options such as "positive match," "maybe match," etc. I'll explore Mocavo a little more.

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About Me

Sometimes I want to jump back in time, into the lives of my ancestors. Not to stay, of course -- too many modern conveniences I'd rather not do without -- but to meet them and watch their interactions with each other. Since I can't do that, I spend time learning about them and the times in which they lived. I look forward to meeting them. I've been seriously searching for my ancestors for nearly 8 years. I plan to continue indefinitely.
If you think we might have ancestors in common or you'd like to contact me for any other reason, please email me at myancestorsandme @ gmail.com.